Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/289

 FOURTH YEAR OF THE WAR-TROUBLES IN KORK.YRA. ~2Q7 Athens of what was going on, an Athenian trireme arrived with envoys to try and defeat these manoeuvres ; while a Corinthian trireme also brought envoys from Corinth to aid the views of the opposite party. The mere presence of Corinthian envoys indi- cated a change in the political feeling of the island : but still more conspicuous did this change become, when a formal public assembly, after hearing both envoys, decided, that Korkyra would maintain her alliance with Athens according to the limited terms of simple mutual defence originally stipulated ;' but would at the same time be in relations of friendship with the Pelopon- nesians, as she had been before the Epidamnian quarrel. But the alliance between Athens and Korkyra had since become practically more intimate, and the Korkyraean fleet had aided the Athenians in the invasion of Peloponnesus : 2 accordingly, the resolution, now adopted, abandoned the present to go back to the past, and to a past which could not be restored. Looking to the war then raging between Athens and the Pelo- ponnesians, such a declaration was self-contradictory : nor, indeed, did the oligarchical party intend it as anything else than a step to a more complete revolution, both foreign and domestic. They followed it up by a political prosecution against Peithias, the citizen of greatest personal influence among the people, who acted by his own choice as proxenus to the Athenians. They accused him of practising to bring Korkyra into slavery to Athens. What were the judicial institutions of the island, under which he was tried, we do not know : but he was acquitted of the charge ; and he then revenged himself by accusing in his turn five of the richest among his oligarchical prosecutors, of the crime of sacrilege, as having violated the sanctity of the sacred grove of Zeus and Alkinous, by causing stakes, for their vine-props, to be cut in it. 3 This was an act distinctly forbidden by law, under 1 Thucyd. i, 44. 2 Thucyd. ii, 25. 3 Thucyd. iii, 70. (j>ua/cuv repveiv %apa.Kae EK TOV re Aiof refievov^ /cat TOV A A/avow fyfua 6e Ka&' iituGTijv ^apo/ca EKEKEITO OTO.TTJP. The present tense refivetv seems to indicate that they were going on habitually making use of the trees in the grove for this purpose. Probably it is this cutting and fixing of stakes to support the vines, which is meant by the word apa/ao//of in Pherckrates, Pers. ap. Athenaeum, vi, p. 269. The Oratio'i of Lvsias (Or. vii,) against Nikomachus, virep TOV arjKoi